Bhubaneswar, Sept. 17: The higher education department’s ambitious plan to launch a performance tracking cell to streamline and monitor the state’s education system has failed to take off.

In July, the department had announced several measures to improve education standards in the state.

The department had decided to create a cell, which was supposed to collect information related to all educational institutions because there was no proper database of colleges available.

Minister of higher education Badri Narayan Patra had launched the cell. The then higher education secretary Aparajita Sarangi was expected to maintain a comprehensive database of the staff and the college’s infrastructure.

More than two months down the line, the cell is yet to become functional. Authorities in the department have blamed it on the Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC). “The project has failed to take off successfully because we don’t have the required hardware. The OCAC is yet to supply us with the equipment,” said Nibedita Jena, director, higher education.

Another project, the Common Minimum Standard (CMS) programme, for all government, non-government (aided and block grant), junior, degree and autonomous colleges of the state, too, has not taken off.

The CMS consisted of a list of 25 items including student attendance, library facilities, teachers’ profile, campus updates, extra-curricular activities etc., which were to be filled up by the principals of all colleges and submitted to the department.

“The department is taking all possible steps to see that teachers work on the CMS projects. We have been sending circulars to all colleges from time to time. Hopefully, it will become operational soon,” said Jena. The grievance redress cell for the single-window clearance set up at the textbook bureau has been closed down. Instead, grievances are now heard at the directorate of higher education every Saturday.

“This was done to make it convenient for clearing all the cases then and there since all officials and files concerned are at the directorate,” said Jena, adding that about 30 cases had already been solved in the past three weeks. Similarly, the direction to teaching faculties to take at least 25 classes a week, including remedial and special classes, is also not being monitored properly.

“Teachers had been asked to stay in the college for at least five hours on working days. This apart, they were asked to maintain lesson plans and progress registers. But little monitoring has been done,” said a faculty member at BJB Junior College.

An official said monitoring teams were being formed.

“It’s in the process. Also, we have been paying surprise visits to some colleges to find out if everything is working fine,” said Jena.